This year, things have changed a bit for me. If you’ve been reading along, you’ll remember I started a new site, Food Blogger on a Diet, to talk about healthy living. It’s related to how I let my body degrade despite my good intentions. But good intentions only count if they’re accompanied by a lot of work. So, the past 7 months I’ve been exercising, eating better, and I’ve lost quite a bit of weight. 2011 has turned into a great year for me.

I feel much better, and though I’m not avoiding sweets altogether (I need my gelato!), I tend not to keep much in the house as I find it greatly helps me appreciate those times when I do eat sweets, and reduce just-because-it’s-in-the-house eating. That, combined with the fact that I work from home and don’t want an entire cake/pie/dessert best suited for 12-14 people sitting in my kitchen, means I wasn’t looking forward to this year’s birthday cake as much as before.

Enter my little Le Creuset mini cocotte. I love this! And the blue color is so pretty. It makes me happy. And today it made me a little cake.

There are so many things I love about this cake, and soon I’ll share a recipe, but I want to keep tweaking it. But what I can tell you about this cake are two great things: it has no oil, butter, or refined sugar in it. And I cooked it in the microwave.

I wasn’t intending on cooking it in the microwave but I wanted to experiment with the batter and it tasted just like I wanted, so why pre-heat the oven for 20 minutes and cook the cake for 10 when 2 minutes in the microwave does just fine?

If you feel like experimenting yourself, here’s a bit about this cake. It’s full of ingredients I already had lying around my house and am eating on a regular basis – greek yogurt (2% but I’m curious to try it again with 0%), cacao, almonds I ground up, honey, and even a splash of almond milk. I used 1/2 an egg and just 2 T. of flour, though in a future version I’d like to eliminate the flour altogether. Add a pinch of baking soda, and it’s ready to go. After, I wanted to top it with something a little sweeter, and I made a quick chocolate ganache with honey instead of white sugar (and yes, a little butter).

Oh, my! I will look forward to a recipe. I’ve just moved in with my fidanzato and he doesn’t have a proper oven but he does have a microwave (though I may just go out and get a fornetto this weekend)…
That Creuset looks adorable.

Try it with coconut flour (if you can get it)–you need you use substantially less, because it absorbs liquid so well. Makes a nice fluffy microwave cake (I call them mug cakes because that’s what I nuke them in).

Coconut flour – wow, sounds good. I was going to suggest tapioca flour or even quinoa flour – some people use corn starch which I cannot eat. But there are more and more wheat flour substitutes daily. Is the mini C a ceramic dish? Didn’t know they made those. Thought they were all enameled iron. More new info – Thanks.

Stop that, just stop it right now. While I’m deprived of everything except the same ol’ potatoes and pasta for three meals a day, you’re whipping up delicious creations like these. Bookmarking for when I make it back to land…

Of course I got my address wrong. Re posting: I just realized I’m late to this birthday party (story of my life). Happy belated birthday Sarah. Could you find a way of adding some decadent cheese into the mix? Maybe a creamy center of sweetened cream, mascarpone or ricotta cheese, flavored anyway your birthday heart desires. That would be something I’d look forward to learning how to make and gobbling up as soon as it cooled off. First time commenting, but a long time fan!!